Description of problem:
aoss is a wrapper script included in the ALSA software that makes it easier for
apps to use the ALSA OSS compat library.
Some apps, such as Firefox or, more precisely, the Flash plugin, use the OSS
interface to play sounds. Because of that, there's sometimes a conflict between
the browser and sound apps with regard to access to the sound card.
E.g., if you start a media player (such as XMMS, etc.) and after that you start
Firefox, there's no sound from those Firefox plugins (such as Flash) that have
the ability to play sound. This issue disappears if Firefox is launched via aoss
like this:
$ aoss firefox &
Please include aoss in future versions of the package, or at least in
alsa-utils. It is the only way to work around this bug.
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
alsa-lib-1.0.12-1.rc1
How reproducible:
always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start a media player such as XMMS and play a file
2. Start Firefox and browse to a Flash-enabled site
Actual results:
The Flash content has no sound.
Expected results:
Any and all Firefox plugins should play the sound regardless of whether other
media players are active at the same time.
Additional info:
According to some, the issue only shows up on systems with a sound card that
lacks hardware mixing support.
See the discussion here, thread is called "XMMS and Firefox (or Flash?) not
playing along nicely":
http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2006-August/thread.html#37626
The problem also shows up in older Fedora versions, such as FC5 and possibly
also FC4 and older.
Some distros such as Ubuntu not only include aoss, but provide a system-level
variable called FIREFOX_DSP which, when set to "aoss" automatically uses aoss
with Firefox (see discussion thread on the LAU mailing list linked above). This
is a great idea.